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karamellkungen · Aug 6, 2002, 04:56 PM

Hello good people!

I'm looking for a good programmer's editor which will let me program in PHP, HTML and javascript with syntax highlighting, and which is OSX native. And which, preferrably, has nothing to do with that child of satan, Emacs.

Any ideas?

Cheers,
-Fredrik

Kristoff · Aug 6, 2002, 05:12 PM

gvim

parsec · Aug 6, 2002, 11:11 PM

BBEdit ?

GVim is also very nice, as well as free.

karamellkungen · Aug 8, 2002, 03:15 AM

It seems like everyone I talk to on this subject tells me to use either Emacs or BBedit. I tried the "light" version of BBedit, but it seems like the syntax highlighting wasn't enabled in that version. $100 for the full version seems like a rather steep price for an editor, methinks. I used gvim a bit on Linux waaay back, but like Emacs I don't really care for the cryptic interface. Well, to heck with it. If I can't find a better editor I guess I'll have to shell out the cash for BBEdit.

Thanks for your help guys.

-Fred

Seb G · Aug 8, 2002, 06:47 AM

Try out Pepper as well. It does syntax highlighting and costs only $35, so it's cheaper than BBEdit. Get the trial version of BBEdit (which you can launch 25 times) and Pepper (shareware) and decide for yourself.

howardm4 · Aug 18, 2002, 08:28 AM

The author of Pepper has called it quits
and the s/w is no longer available for
registration.

Child of Satan? Emacs? Surely you jest!

Detrius · Aug 18, 2002, 02:34 PM

Originally posted by karamellkungen:
It seems like everyone I talk to on this subject tells me to use either Emacs or BBedit. I tried the "light" version of BBedit, but it seems like the syntax highlighting wasn't enabled in that version. $100 for the full version seems like a rather steep price for an editor, methinks. I used gvim a bit on Linux waaay back, but like Emacs I don't really care for the cryptic interface. Well, to heck with it. If I can't find a better editor I guess I'll have to shell out the cash for BBEdit.

Thanks for your help guys.

-Fred

Try xemacs. Just use XDarwin in rootless mode and launch xemacs. Then, it has menus and everything. You don't have to worry about the really really wierd key combinations.

arshmuck · Aug 18, 2002, 04:49 PM

somebody should port kate to osx. right now you can run it with kde under xdarwin.

karamellkungen · Aug 19, 2002, 12:41 AM

Originally posted by Detrius:

Try xemacs. Just use XDarwin in rootless mode and launch xemacs. Then, it has menus and everything. You don't have to worry about the really really wierd key combinations.

While I agree that XEmacs is nicer than lain, old, evil console Emacs, you still need to muck around in that .emacs file if you want to do any kind of customization. I used it on and off for years on Linux and Solaris and I am *never* going back. :-)

I downloaded some shareware editors off of Tucows and finally tried BBEdit SW version which I think I'll stick with. I hope there is a way to convert my Textpad syntax definition files to the BBEdit format though...

Thanks for your help guys!
-Fred

Detrius · Aug 19, 2002, 11:52 PM

Originally posted by karamellkungen:

While I agree that XEmacs is nicer than lain, old, evil console Emacs, you still need to muck around in that .emacs file if you want to do any kind of customization. I used it on and off for years on Linux and Solaris and I am *never* going back. :-)

I downloaded some shareware editors off of Tucows and finally tried BBEdit SW version which I think I'll stick with. I hope there is a way to convert my Textpad syntax definition files to the BBEdit format though...

Thanks for your help guys!
-Fred

I never touched the .emacs file... everything I wanted to change was a simple check in one of the menus.

Mactoid · Aug 20, 2002, 01:35 AM

Originally posted by howardm4:
...Child of Satan? Emacs? Surely you jest!

True. Everyone knows Emacs is not just some meager spawn of satan, but Mephistophilis himself

Purpendicular · Aug 20, 2002, 10:11 AM

I used BBedit as a programming editor for a little while and I whas about to buy it when I found www.jedit.org.

There is a very large number of plugins that you can download with code completion, prettifying the code etc, etc, on top of the 70 or so different languages for which you get syntax highlighting. The layout is also higly configurable.

I use it with 10.1.4 on a 7500 with a G3 300MHz upgrade and have no problem with speed. (It is written in java, and version 3 was a bit slow, version 4 is just perfect.)

On top of it all, it is free.

Erik

clayhorste · Aug 21, 2002, 01:09 PM

I don't know why, but I seem to always try alternative text editors, but I never find anything even close to BBEdit. It is very fast and very versatile. I was taking a CS class which codes in Java and tried several other editors including Jedit. I guess if you like the completion then it can be handy, but the raw power of BBEdit really makes up for it. The search and replace is phenominal.

My class had a lab with Win2k machines and we used RealJ and that was aweful software. The syntax coloring needed to be force updated and it really wasn't a whole lot more sophisticated than Notepad.

What I found indespensible for coding was also using a spreadsheet. If you have several statements that are simillar that can't be put into a loop, creating them in a spreadsheet can save a lot of time and is pretty easy. I used this combo a lot with ColdFusion and SQL.

If you are looking for free then BBEdit lite should serve you well. The full version adds a lot of integration and HTML features that you may not need.

Gul Banana · Aug 21, 2002, 11:22 PM

Originally posted by clayhorste:
What I found indespensible for coding was also using a spreadsheet. If you have several statements that are simillar that can't be put into a loop, creating them in a spreadsheet can save a lot of time and is pretty easy. I used this combo a lot with ColdFusion and SQL.

How does that work? I mean, what do you do and how does it help you?

clarkgoble · Aug 22, 2002, 06:29 PM

The problem with JEdit is that it is written in Java using Swing. (At least it sure looks this way) i.e. menus are on the window, not the menu bar. Yeah, a minor issue, I know. And I use both PCs and Macs so it isn't that big a deal. The other issue though is that Java is slow. Compare moving the mouse across the menus in JEdit with the equivalent motion over the menubar in BBEdit. *Slow*

I know everyone says that Java isn't that slow. Yet why is it that when I actually run Java apps they are so much slower than regular apps?

clayhorste · Aug 23, 2002, 06:40 PM

If you have to code statements that are similar, but off by some regular difference you can set them up in columns in a spreadsheet. The items that are the same you just copy down, and the pieces that are different you can either use a formula to create them or you can just write them by hand. Then you can copy the code back in to BBEdit and then replace the tabs with spaces and your code is written. With Cold Fusion it wasn't always apparent that a loop would work to eliminate writing code that was similar. The spreadsheet really saved me a lot of time. I got the idea from a PLC engineer who said that he wrote all of his colde in Excel. The only problem with Excel is that it would mess with some of my data when it was in a format that it would normally convert (dates etc.)

Now that I am formally studying CS I don't know how much I will be using spreadsheets to write code, but it sure helped me as a self taught web developer.

-clay-

QUOTE]Originally posted by Gul Banana:

How does that work? I mean, what do you do and how does it help you? [/QUOTE]

T u r b o · Aug 23, 2002, 08:40 PM

I too am looking for a programmers editor. Desired features: must be FAST! I can type 130+wpm, and can't stand these editors that can barely even keep up with your typing. Syntax highlighting, and WordStar keyboard commands.

Anything out there like this?

Thanks.

- Mike

serving2masters · Aug 25, 2002, 04:12 PM

I wrote an editor myself recently. It does syntax highlighting, automatic indenting, and the main thing I wrote it to do is to tab-complete variable, function, and class names.

If you want to try it out there's a recent version at
http://homepage.mac.com/gotterdamn/Thunim.dmg.gz The interface is still a little messy, but I think it's pretty usable.

Right now it only works with Obj-C, C, C++, and java, but the "agnostic" mode will tab-complete any word previously used in the file or in any files you include from the Library menu. If you want it to work for another language though, the syntax highlighting and recognition of definitions is completely data driven - there's just a bunch of files like "Thunim.app/Contents/Resources/java.def", so a new .def file could probably be written in ten minutes if you know the language well, and the next time you start the app it will have the language mode.

(note: it's been a while since it crashed on me, but since it's possible it might, I should mention that it autosaves everything as #filename# about once a minute)